Psychoanalysis and qualitative psychotherapy research - Some methodological notes

The authors discuss the extent to which psychoanalytic treatments can be tested by qualitative research strategies. They show that these strategies operate without an adequate and epistemologically justified methodology, and that psychoanalytic treatments, because of their specific characteristics defy such kind of research. Instead of nomological and qualitative approaches, the authors suggest to systematize in a treatment theory according to treatment outcomes those structures which were appearing in the course of treatments examined in naturalistic studies. Given this approach, and provided that the treatment theory is conceptually based on a "consensual common ground", such studies allow the prognostic conclusion that psychoanalytic treatments will be successful if the sequences that are structurally generalized in the treatment theory are actually realized in treatments in accordance with patients' unique requirements.